Film Freak Centraltag:typepad.com,2003:weblog-999282957331064452015-01-24T00:01:00-05:00TypePadGhost in the Shell 2: Innocence (2004); Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004); Time of the Wolf (2003)|Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004) [Special Collector's Edition - Widescreen] - DVDtag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c01bb07e04efb970d2015-01-24T00:01:00-05:002015-01-22T14:25:00-05:00Innocence ****/**** written and directed by Mamoru Oshii SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW **½/**** Image A Sound A Extras A starring Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina Jolie, Giovanni Ribisi written and directed by Kerry Conran Le Temps du loup ****/**** starring Isabelle Huppert, Béatrice Dalle, Patrice Chéreau, Rona Hartner written and directed by Michael Haneke by Walter Chaw For me, the most intoxicating visions of the future are those in which we're drowning in an ocean of our past--garbage, wreckage, Romes burned to a cinder and heaped against the new Meccas of our collective tomorrows. Star Wars proffered a kind of aesthetic of dirt that appealed: a wonderland where the spaceships looked like they'd been flown and there were places like Mos Eisley that reeked of stale liquor, sawdust, and cigarettes. (The distance that George Lucas has gone to disinfect his grubby vision of the future is the same distance that esteem for the franchise has fallen amongst all but the most die-hard chattel.) Among the spearhead of a group of artists who redefined the science-fiction genre in film the same way that Sergio Leone and Sam Peckinpah scuffed-up the western in the Sixties, Ridley Scott evolved the...Bill ChambersVengeance is Mine (1979) [The Criterion Collection] - Blu-ray Disctag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c01bb07c6f93c970d2014-12-17T21:49:23-05:002014-12-17T21:41:31-05:00click any image to enlarge ***½/**** Image A Sound B+ Extras A starring Ken Ogata, Mayumi Ogawa, Mitsuko Baisho, Frankie Sakai screenplay by Masaru Baba, based on the novel by Ryuzo Saki directed by Shohei Imamura by Walter Chaw It would be tempting to say that nature is appalled by all the terrible things Iwao Enokizu (Ken Ogata) does. Just after Enokizu hammers an old man to death in a garden and takes his stuff, Nature erupts in a windstorm--furious witness, it seems: a tempest as analogy for the rough gales driving the mysterious tides of this murderer's soul. Yet Shohei Imamura has something else entirely on his mind. Vengeance is Mine is about the fallacy of a moral universe. It's not that it believes there's no reason for atrocity; rather, it believes there's no definition for atrocity. Imamura is the spiritual brother of guys like Werner Herzog and Terrence Malick. The questions he asks aren't about ethics and morality, they're about all the ways that men lie to themselves about being bound by ethics and morality, only to transgress those boundaries they create, whether they be bans on religion, law, or philosophy. They're not evil. They can't help it....Bill ChambersFantastic Fest 14: The World of Kanakotag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c01bb0795b863970d2014-10-09T16:29:46-05:002014-10-09T16:29:46-05:00***½/**** starring Koji Yakusho, Nana Komatsu, Satoshi Tsumabuki, Jo Odagiri screenplay by Tetsuya Nakashima, Miako Tadano, Nobuhiro Monma, based on the novel by Akio Fukamachi directed by Tetsuya Nakashima by Walter Chaw Takashi Miike's Natural Born Killers, essentially, with a bit of the old Park Chan-wook ultra-violence (or is it Shohei Imamura's A Clockwork Orange? Tarantino's Hardcore?); I'm finding it next to impossible to talk about Tetsuya Nakashima's The World of Kanako free of larger contexts, and its short-circuiting of my hard drive is perhaps intentional. The film is extremely stylish, distractingly so--or it would be if not for a central, anchoring performance from Koji Yakusho as disgraced detective Akikazu Fujishima, demolished by a long drunk and roused back to furious, ugly action by the disappearance of his daughter, Kanako (Nana Komatsu). Yakusho is so good, so grounded in his self- destruction and loathing, so extraordinary, really, from calamity to atrocity to spurious bloodletting, that watching him in this Grand Guignol is something like a true privilege. He's manifested possibly the most disgusting hero in the history of such things (Mickey Rourke's Harry Angel? Eagle scout), a creature of this dank, abattoir noir who gets progressively filthier, baser, as the...Bill ChambersFantastic Fest '14: Over Your Dead Bodytag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c01b8d0779d98970c2014-10-05T12:20:28-05:002014-10-05T12:23:48-05:00**½/**** starring Ebizo Ichikawa, Ko Shibasaki, Hideaki Ito, Miho Nakanishi screenplay by Kikumi Yamagishi directed by Takashi Miike by Walter Chaw Takashi Miike's dip into formalism and tradition continues with Over Your Dead Body, a play-within-a-play conceit whereby star stage performer Miyuki (Ko Shibasaki) reprises the legendary role of Oiwa in the classic "Yotsuya Kaidan" and finds his off-stage relationship with co-star Kousuke (Ebizo Ichikawa) beginning to resemble the supernatural relational drama in which they've been cast. It's essentially the good version of Birdman, however low a bar that might be, with Miike embracing the new, languid pace of his middle-to-later career before suggesting that maybe he's ready to let a little of the ol' Gozu out again. Another Audition tale of a woman wronged, Over Your Dead Body can be read by the Miike scholar as further examination of the filmmaker's sources and inspirations while providing for the neophyte enough craft and late-in-the-game Guignol to sate most any variety of bloodlust. Yeah, it gets pretty nasty. Though the stage sets and blocking are overwhelmingly gorgeous at times, the film suffers from attempts to drag archetype into the text, making the whole feel dangerously like a liberal-arts lecture as opposed...Bill ChambersSteamboy (2004) [Collector's Gift Set] - DVDtag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c01a73def1e93970d2014-07-17T23:01:00-05:002014-07-17T15:05:55-05:00*/**** Image C+ Sound A Extras B+ screenplay by Sadayuki Murai and Katsuhiro Otomo directed by Katsuhiro Otomo by Walter Chaw Katsuhiro Otomo's Akira is both the best and the worst thing ever to happen to anime in the United States. For the believer, its Blade Runner cyberpunk ultra-cool was an eye-opener, but to hold the film up as the standard for the medium means that a lot of people looking to it as their introduction believe that anime is a little excitement cordoned off by long stretches of confused, gravid exposition. It tries to condense hundreds of pages of metaphysical text into scientist characters delivering what seem like endless exchanges in high-minded gobbledygook. Akira's popularity obscures the finest examples of the medium, films that manage to balance serious metaphysical musing with actual forward momentum (the two Ghost in the Shell films, for instance); to tell adult tales in affecting ways (Grave of the Fireflies); to redefine genre thriller (Perfect Blue), action (Ninja Scroll), and fantasy (Princess Mononoke); and to present children's fables as artifacts that are as useful for adults as they are for kids (Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro). Akira isn't the greatest anime film, just the most...Bill ChambersLike Someone in Love (2012) [The Criterion Collection] - Dual-Format Editiontag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c01a73dd085e5970d2014-06-02T14:33:44-05:002014-06-02T14:33:44-05:00click any image to enlarge ***½/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras B+ starring Rin Takanashi, Tadashi Okuno, Rio Kase, Denden written and directed by Abbas Kiarostami by Angelo Muredda Few filmmakers know how to put you on your guard from the first frame as effectively as Abbas Kiarostami. It's clear enough that Like Someone in Love opens in a bar in Tokyo, but it's harder to say at first what we're looking at and why. The closest voice we hear belongs to the off-camera Akiko (Rin Takanashi), a young woman who's a little too preoccupied with lying her way out of a hostile phone conversation to process the flat image of well-dressed young revellers in front of her. Whether she's our lead takes a couple of false tries to figure out. Our first candidate is a redhead around her age, sitting at a table off to the side until she suddenly relocates to an empty seat in the foreground, coaching Akiko through the rest of her call until she relinquishes her spot moments later to a fortysomething man who speaks to both women with first the familiarity of a parent, then the condescension of a high-end pimp directing his employees....Bill ChambersMetropolis (2001) - DVDtag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c01a511a4cc30970c2014-04-22T23:01:00-05:002014-04-22T18:50:24-05:00***½/**** Image A+ Sound A+ Extras A screenplay by Katsuhiro Ôtomo, based on the comic book by Osamu Tezuka directed by Rintaro by Walter Chaw There is a sense of wonder inherent in the exploration of new mediums. A young Maxim Gorky's 1896 review of one of the first Lumiére Cinématographe shows in Russia begins, "Last night I was in the Kingdom of Shadows." As I began exploring the anime medium (not a "genre," I am assured, and I have come to concur) a scant couple of years ago, I felt similarly the interloper in a dreamscape conjured by a culture steeped in tradition, mythology, and the sort of artistic sensibility that could only evolve from the only people victimized by the most terrible weapon of mass destruction humans have devised. Anime is--perhaps predictably, then--often-post-apocalyptic (its themes exploring the existential by way of William Gibson's cyberpunk and Philip K. Dick's identity crisis) finding elements of the rapture in such rapturous fantasies as the lyrical Princess Mononoke, the viscerally charged Ninja Scroll, and the ferocious yet delicate Nausicaä of the Valley of Wind. RUNNING TIME 109 minutes MPAA PG-13 ASPECT RATIO(S) 1.85:1 (16x9-enhanced) LANGUAGES Japanese DTS 5.1 English DD 5.1 French...Bill ChambersThe Hidden Fortress (1958) [The Criterion Collection] - Dual-Format Editiontag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c01a3fce92892970b2014-04-07T23:30:19-05:002014-04-08T10:50:21-05:00click any image to enlarge ***½/**** Image A Sound B Extras A starring Toshiro Mifune, Minoru Chiaki, Kamatari Fujiwara, Susumu Fujita screenplay by Ryuzo Kikushima, Hideo Oguni, Shinobu Hashimoto and Akira Kurosawa directed by Akira Kurosawa by Walter Chaw It is many things, but Akira Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress is rare for its ability to evoke a feeling ineffable of finding yourself in the company of betters and wanting desperately/doing your best to fit in. It's a weightless feeling. There's euphoria in it. Fear, too, the understanding that being a cool kid is a temporary state, at least for you. And then there's the nagging embarrassment for the friend along for the ride, what that friend says about your unworthiness, and how sick it makes you that you could feel this way about your only real ally in this whole mess. It's two movies, then: the stylized slapstick of opportunistic peasants Tahei (Minoru Chiaki) and Matashichi (Kamatari Fujiwara); and a more standard jidaigeki involving a princess in exile (Misa Uehara) and her bodyguard/retainer General Makabe (Toshiro Mifune) trying to transport a fortune in gold to re-establish their fallen kingdom. The Hidden Fortress would work without the peasants, but it would...Bill ChambersSugar (2009) + Tokyo Sonata (2008)tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c01a51198d88d970c2014-04-07T23:01:00-05:002014-04-07T10:57:53-05:00SUGAR ***½/**** starring Algenis Perez Soto, Rayniel Rufino, Andre Holland, Ann Whitney written and directed by Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck TOKYO SONATA ****/**** starring Teruyuki Kagawa, Kyôko Koizumi, Yû Koyanagi, Kai Inowaki screenplay by Max Mannix, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Sachiko Tanaka directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa by Walter Chaw In case you haven't noticed, there's a cinematic trend afoot that looks to the fringes for stories of survival in a world where it's suddenly chic to shop at the thrift store. I credit Harmony Korine and David Gordon Green with first finding the poetry in destitution in this new American cycle, with maybe Gus Van Sant (with his Drugstore Cowboy and My Own Private Idaho) acting as the accidental primogenitor. If it's not Frozen River's trailer-park heroine and her dalliance with human trafficking, it's Wendy & Lucy's despair from the bottom of the capitalist food chain. In the mainstream, there's Sean Penn's fantastic Into the Wild and the reboot of 3:10 to Yuma, which at its heart is a drama about the toll of being the breadwinner. Even Hancock, a movie that keeps improving in the rearview, can be read with profit as a document of how tough it is for...Bill ChambersThe Wind Rises (2013) + Frozen (2013)tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c01a73d8125cf970d2014-02-25T14:18:44-05:002014-02-25T14:36:04-05:00THE WIND RISES ****/**** written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki FROZEN **½/**** screenplay by Jennifer Lee, inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's "The Snow Queen" directed by Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee Editor's Note: This review pertains to the original Japanese-language version of The Wind Rises. by Walter Chaw Hayao Miyazaki's alleged swan song The Wind Rises is mature, romantic, grand storytelling that just happens to be something like a romanticized biography of Jiro Horikoshi, the aeronautical engineer behind the design of the Mitsubishi A5M, which led, ultimately, to the Zero. Indeed, for a Western audience, watching Jiro's dreams of squadrons of Zeros buzzing over fields of green is chilling, and advance critics seemed unable to distinguish the Japanese war machine from the film's focus on a life lived in pursuit of dreams. In truth, separating these two aspects of the picture--the proximate and the historical--is self-defeating. (Dismissing the movie out of hand is equally blinkered.) One without the other, The Wind Rises loses anything like substance, resonance, importance. It would fall on the one side into gauzy bullshit, on the other into Triumph of the Will. As is, it's something more akin to Studio Ghibli's own Grave of the Fireflies...Bill ChambersMessage from Space (1978) - DVDtag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c01a3fc440128970b2014-01-15T20:41:17-05:002014-01-15T21:15:32-05:00***/**** Image C+ Sound C- Extras C Madness A starring Vic Morrow, Sonny Chiba, Philip Casnoff, Peggy Lee Brennan screenplay by Hiroo Matsuda directed by Kinji Fukasaku by Walter Chaw Essentially a big-budget, feature-film version of Calvinball if Bill Watterson were a manga artist undergoing a psychotic break, Kinji Fukasaku's balls-insane Message from Space is a very special brand of genius. It honours no structural logic that I can discern, though it does have a kinetic kid-logic, the kind honed from endless summer afternoons tromping around with your buddies, making shit up and being happier than you'll ever be again in your life. Message from Space captures that headiness, that heedlessness, the sort of reckless creativity that charts the course between memorable films by someone like Ed Wood and forgettable films by every other hack with the same level of talent but not the same joyful dedication. I'm not saying Message from Space is a good movie--I can't even say that the reasons for its existence are particularly honourable (it's an obvious Star Wars cash-grab). But I can say that Message from Space is crazy-energetic and has more delightful moments packed into it than a dozen "normal" movies. I also...Bill ChambersThree... Extremes (2005) + Hellbent (2005) - DVDstag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c019b0041b39a970d2013-10-23T19:45:22-05:002013-10-23T19:45:22-05:00THREE... EXTREMES ***/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras C+ DUMPLINGS-The Hong Kong Extreme: starring Miriam Yeung, Bai Ling screenplay by Lilian Lee directed by Fruit Chan CUT-The Korean Extreme: starring Lee Byung-Hun, Lim Won-Hee written and directed by Park Chanwook BOX-The Japan Extreme: starring Kyoko Hasegawa,Atsuro Watabe screenplay by Haruko Fukushima directed by Takashi Miike HELLBENT ***½/**** Image C- Sound B+ Extras C starring Dylan Fergus, Bryan Kirkwood, Hank Harris, Andrew Levitas written and directed by Paul Etheredge-Ouzts by Walter Chaw My favourite working cinematographer is Harris Savides. His collaborations with Gus Van Sant and his contribution to Jonathan Glazer's Birth demonstrate to me an agility with aspect ratio and rhythm that's particularly pleasing to my own ways of seeing. A close second, though, is Christopher Doyle, the great Australian cinematographer who teams almost exclusively with Asian directors (most notably on the bulk of Wong Kar Wai's visually arresting filmography, Zhang Yimou's Hero, and Pen-Ek Ratanaruang's Last Life in the Universe)--his stuff indicative of a kind of lyrical, ritualistic devouring that matches the best of the Asian sensibility in pace and narrative. Doyle joins an elite crowd (Greg Toland, James Wong Howe, Raoul Coutard, Sven Nykvist, Vilmos Zsigmond, Conrad Hall,...Bill ChambersTIFF '13: Why Don’t You Play in Hell? tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c019aff6f6caf970c2013-09-18T12:38:11-05:002013-09-19T18:36:08-05:00***/**** written and directed by Sion Sono by Angelo Muredda Two of the funniest films at TIFF were, of all things, elegies. Like the doppelgänger duo of The Double and Enemy and the misdirected-revenge double-bill of Bastards and Prisoners, Raya Martin and Mark Peranson's La última película and Sion Sono's Why Don't You Play In Hell? seemed to be sharing a direct line, commiserating over the demise of celluloid while huddled together in an abandoned cinema, bracing for the digital apocalypse in mock terror. Tonal and thematic overlaps aside, however, the films diverge in their cases for the relative importance of filmmakers at this moment of crisis. La última película directs its satirical energies towards Alex Ross Perry's self-satisfied hero, a director on a mission. Sono's by turns delirious and sentimental film goes the other way, all but deifying its energetic schlockmeister, who prays to the Movie God as a teen that he might one day make something worthy of 35 mm and finds his prayers answered ten years later, when a pair of warring yakuza clans commission him to turn their grand battle into a cinematic time capsule, to be screened at the homecoming for one of the mobster's...Angelo MureddaAkira (1988) - DVD (THX)tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c01901e6c21b9970b2013-07-24T23:01:00-05:002013-07-24T12:21:49-05:00***/**** Image B+ Sound B (English)/A (Japanese) screenplay by Katsuhiro Otomo & Izo Hashimoto directed by Katsuhiro Otomo by Walter Chaw What begins as a miracle of cinema ends as an obscure endurance test, but the visual landmarks that you pass along this strange animated journey's way make the trip one of value. Akira is two hours and five minutes of philosophical soup, a surrealistic melding of Blade Runner, X-Men, Firestarter, and Frank Miller's "Sin City" mixed by the melancholic sensibilities of the only culture that has experienced the Atomic bomb, with a healthy sampling of really fast motorcycles tossed in for visceral crunch. RUNNING TIME 124 minutes MPAA R ASPECT RATIO(S) 1.78:1 (16x9-enhanced) LANGUAGES Japanese Dolby Surround English DD 5.1 CC No SUBTITLES English REGION 1 DISC TYPE DVD-9 STUDIO Pioneer The setting is 2019, thirty-one years after World War III has annihilated Tokyo. A "Neo-Tokyo" rises from the ashes, its teeming mean streets patrolled by religious fanatics, storm troopers, feral dogs, and irradiated freaks. One night, a small motorcycle gang led by tough-talking Kaneda is ambushed by a rival gang, with one of their members, Tetsuo, seriously injured and then, inexplicably, abducted by a government strike force. Aided...Bill ChambersCowboy Bebop: The Movie (2001) [Special Edition] - DVDtag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c01901e20789e970b2013-07-06T23:01:00-05:002013-07-04T20:07:06-05:00***/**** Image A Sound A Extras C screenplay by Keiko Nobumoto directed by Shinichiro Watanabe by Walter Chaw Yôko Kanno's soundtrack for Cowboy Bebop: The Movie (hereafter Cowboy Bebop) is a jubilant a blend of funk, jazz, blues, soul, and punk that soars even though it's a pale shadow of the "bebop" innovated by Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, and Bud Powell (and Kenny Clarke and Max Roach) in Minton's Playhouse in the early 1940s. It functions as something of a brilliantly mellifluous backbone to the film and the series that spawned it--chimeric and socially significant, again like Bird's bebop, in that the 26-episode Japanese television series became one of the most recognized and revered crossovers in animated series history. The bebop idea of riffing on a melody to the extent that the melody becomes unrecognizable (with an attendant introduction of dozens of beats to the standard four-beat bar) carries through in the frenetic kineticism of series that also, by its format, mirrors jazz bebop's compact agility (generally carried by quartet and quintet arrangements)--making a feature-length film, then, a strange place for the "Cowboy Bebop" franchise to go. RUNNING TIME 115 minutes MPAA R ASPECT RATIO(S) 1.85:1 (16x9-enhanced) LANGUAGES...Bill Chambers